What do we do when we stop believing?
A fellow blogger admitted that she still said her bedtime prayers even though she no longer believed that someone else was listening to them. I asked her why she still said them. While she has not responded yet, and does not have to at all, I have asked myself the same question many, many times.
If I no longer have faith in my faith, what next? For myself, the question is simple, I move on and adjust to a world in which my hope for betterment is purely on my own shoulders. No priest, pastor, guru, bishop, swami, imam, or psychic offers me anything. The world tells me that I am to fend for myself and fuck the rest. (Admit it, that’s what is being taught by most people today outside a religious context.) The “feel good” movements of the 60’s have proven to be a failure (free love, EST, Dianetics, drug-induced enlightenment, etc)
I can handle this piece on my own, I’ve come to the conclusion over time and My thinking has adjusted to it, but what about my wife and our relationship, and what do I tell my kids.
For my wife, I tell her that we no longer match, that when we kneel in prayer it’s just for show, a sign of appeasement, an empty gesture to keep the piece at home. But once she knows that, the gesture is a mockery of her faith, and a cancer between us.
And what about the children? It feels like I’m killing of Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy in one fell swoop. “Give up hope kids!” I will have to say, “God’s a crock, the angels are as fake as fairies, and everything we’ve taught you for 12 years is just wrong.”
There is no hope of a next life, or salvation, or seeing loved ones on the far side of the bright light.
What do I tell them? “You’ve got 45 good years until your health starts to fail and then it’s just a slow march to incontinence and the grave. Everything you love will die. All you work for will rot. You can fight the good fight, make some money, share the wealth, soothe the suffering of those who have less, but in the end, we all die, and that’s it.”
For me that sometimes seems like blessed relief, but how do you kill that hope in children? What do you tell them?
(This mood will pass, i know, but .....)
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